Parallel Compression - New York Drums?

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Euan_Fox

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Hey all, I've been taking mixing lessons from a professional and he's showed me a technique called New York Drums, or parallel compression. I get the basics, but could someone give me some useful tips and maybe a simple walkthrough? I have Cubase 5 with the standard inserts, no waves plugins. Any help would be greatly appreciated :)
 
Parallel Compression eh?

Basically, you have two copies of the same thing (or two busses processing the same thing).

On one of them, you have no compression or gentle compression.

On the other one, you have very aggressive compression.


The point is that you can blend to taste and have all the characteristics of heavy compression. (fuller, louder, whatever), whilst still maintaining natural transients.
 
Hey thanks for the super quick reply! :)
Something I'm not too sure about is do you send the tracks to the buses, already processed, with all of the inserts running, or without them?
 
I've tried that technique before in Cubase and didn't like the results. The way I did it was solo the drum tracks and export them to a stereo wav file and then import it back in as a new track. I used heavy compression on the stereo track, but I think I did it wrong because it didn't add any punch, just mud.
 
Euan_Fox said:
Hey thanks for the super quick reply! :)
Something I'm not too sure about is do you send the tracks to the buses, already processed, with all of the inserts running, or without them?
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I'm not sure what you mean bout your inserts.

In analog terms, you have your mics going into your mixer channels, effects, processes etc, then the the sum of the would go to bus A and bus B.
A is dry, B is compressed, and the two are summed for final output.

It's the same in software but there are several ways to do it.
 
It never really impressed me with my own drums. I did whatever I do to the individual tracks, and then bussed them to two groups. One with no processing, one with heavy duty processing minus the overheads (compressed overheads sound sucky). Blend to taste. It made them punchier, but lack of punch was never my problem to me, so I didn't like it.
 
What Steen says... copy track, compress, sum. And listen to the Gerg about OHs...

I use it on bass occasionally, along with volume automation, if I have particularly annoying notes to tame, but as always, the answer is to learn how not to make those notes annoying in the first instance.
 
A lot of newer VST compressor plug-ins have a wet/dry control, not sure about Cubase — if not you might find a free/cheap one, this is probably the easiest way to achieve what your after, anything less than 100% Wet - instant parallel compression.
 
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As usual, Greg has good points!

He's probably one of the few who has tried it out for taste rather than to fix tracking issues.

Personally, I only really use it on vocals where more 'beef' is required. I tend to eq the highs out of the duplicate compressed copy.
 
Cubase 5 quick parallel compression setup:

Create a group channel (Project>Add Track>Group Channel). Send outputs from each individual drum track to it via Inspector window on left (IMO, not overheads or any cymbals). Create an effects channel (Project>Add Track>FX Channel). Insert on this FX channel a compressor. From the created 'Drum' group channel, Send to 'Density MKII' FX channel. Send about 50%.

Mix in the effected signal to taste with the drum buss.

By the way, I have not found a stock Cubase compressor will work well for this. Waves API2500 is the goto choice for me. Try the free 'Density MKII'. Really good results can be had with it. Try 'NY Style' preset to start with. Squash the hell out of it. :)
 
Steenamaroo said:
I only really use it on vocals where more 'beef' is required. I tend to eq the highs out of the duplicate compressed copy.
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Interesting. Goes to show there's more than one way to skin a cat. In this article: THE EXCITING COMPRESSOR , where they explain how it was originally done in Mo-town, they actually crank the highs on the duplicated track. "On the compressed channel, he compressed the h**l out of it and added a ton of high-frequency equalization." 4th paragraph "The Motown 1960's Exciting Compressor".
 
Funny, I remember reading that last year. Never got around to trying it though.
I think I'll have to now!! :)
 
Thanks a lot for the info guys! That Motown article was really interesting, I'll give it a go tomorrow! Vocals is something I've been working on, I too like to get them at the front of the sound. Vocals>Kick>Bass :)
 
RAMI said:
Interesting. Goes to show there's more than one way to skin a cat. In this article: THE EXCITING COMPRESSOR , where they explain how it was originally done in Mo-town, they actually crank the highs on the duplicated track. "On the compressed channel, he compressed the h**l out of it and added a ton of high-frequency equalization." 4th paragraph "The Motown 1960's Exciting Compressor".
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I've used parallel compression on my vocals with more success than I have with my drums. I don't jack the highs though. That's crazy talk.
 
As an aside, it's a technique that can be used with other instruments, not just drums (and for live as well as studio mixing too).

Sound guru Dave Rat (he does the FOH mixing for Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Blink 182 and a bunch of others) described how he uses a variant of this on the whole band in his blog HERE.

I had to read it two or three times to get what he's doing--but have since had a play and, on the right material, it can work well.
 
Euan_Fox said:
Hey thanks for the super quick reply! :)
Something I'm not too sure about is do you send the tracks to the buses, already processed, with all of the inserts running, or without them?
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You send it pre fader.
 
Great thread here, anyone try this on bass? I use it to compress the lows on a bass buss (under 500hz) but not the highs, it sounds better than a multiband compressor, I guess because the sounds are blended together.
 
PDP said:
Great thread here, anyone try this on bass? I use it to compress the lows on a bass buss (under 500hz) but not the highs, it sounds better than a multiband compressor, I guess because the sounds are blended together.
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No, but I'm about to. :)
 
Greg_L said:
I've used parallel compression on my vocals with more success than I have with my drums. I don't jack the highs though. That's crazy talk.
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I've tried it on just about everything except guitar. every time I use it, I hear what it does, I think it's pretty cool, and then decide I can't see why I'd use it.
 
Greg_L said:
I've used parallel compression on my vocals with more success than I have with my drums. I don't jack the highs though. That's crazy talk.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I don't use it all that often but my take on parallel' in general is that it offers a method to add (and subsequently add or subtract) in rather radical ways that would never fly on track itself.
Smash' (the front end transient –the whole thing fairly typical) or emphasize- In specific dynamic ways, maybe use boost or cuts to color/focus or clean up where you've added.
A good analogy might be how you'd contour reverb with eq.
 
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